I first saw it a month before he died,
When we took my father on
A drive through his high school town.
Thornton
We listened to the Shirelles
On the way, driving through vineyards
And dusty dirt roads. In Thornton,
Grapevines wither because it is cold,
The December ice too fresh, too biting
For their youthful leaves, and they die,
Brokenhearted for the flight of youth and sun.

He was five. Tilting the broken piece of glass
just so, he caught the light of the sun
Like the most adept of mathematicians
(as we would later know him to be).
He honed it, empowered it,
Focused it on the small insects before him;
they shriveled, peeled,
Blazing on the hot sands of Alexandria,
An ashen pile of ants, subjects and witnesses
To geometrical genesis
On the hot sands of Alexandria.

High noon, a day
Awash in gold, basking in sun and
The leaves more golden t
Than anything Midas ever touched.
While mothers and children and dogs
Chase each other in a park
While lovers kiss and are kissed,
She sits in the space
Made empty by all the love around her.

the x wife calls
tells me the children miss me.
her voice
a mirror of broken glass
fragments falling into
the touch of sadness
from her fingers
the soft laughter
of her eyes like a candle
in the night

tonight
twilight comes to play
whispering in my night
quick as life
I hear the sadness
quick as life
I can hear the regret

I 've wounded you

I can only be
what I was
meant to be

I am the candle without the wick

excuse me, i tell her, i've got to go.

the concept of terror is
laying awake at night,
not knowing when they'll come for you.
It is like God scooping up handfuls of
ocean. Terror is cowering
behind a sheer curtain, knowing
that all but the end is near.

The prayers that go unanswered
The texts that go unread
In the silence, dead silence,
of Night.

There is another tear in the lining of my mind
and my sanity is dripping out.